Scalable Continuous Vortex Reactor for Gram to Kilo Scale for UV and Visible Photochemistry

Lee, Darren S.; Sharabi, Medhat; Jefferson-Loveday, Richard; Pickering, Stephen J.; Poliakoff, Martyn; George, Michael W.

Abstract

© 2020 American Chemical Society. We report the development of a scalable continuous Taylor vortex reactor for both UV and visible photochemistry. This builds on our recent report (Org. Process Res. Dev. 2017, 21, 1042) detailing a new approach to continuous visible photochemistry. Here, we expand this by showing that our approach can also be applied to UV photochemistry and that either UV or visible photochemistry can be scaled-up using our design. We have achieved scale-up in productivity of over 300× with a visible light photo-oxidation that requires oxygen gas and 10× with a UV-induced [2 + 2] cycloaddition obtaining scales of up to 7.45 kg day-1 for the latter. Furthermore, we demonstrate that oxygen is efficiently taken up in the reactions of singlet O2, and for the examples examined, that near-stoichiometric quantities of oxygen can be used with little loss of reactor productivity. Furthermore, our design should be scalable to a substantially larger size and have the potential for scaling-out with reactors in parallel.

Citation

Lee, D. S., Sharabi, M., Jefferson-Loveday, R., Pickering, S. J., Poliakoff, M., & George, M. W. (2020). Scalable Continuous Vortex Reactor for Gram to Kilo Scale for UV and Visible Photochemistry. Organic Process Research and Development, 24(2), 201-206. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.oprd.9b00475

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 28, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Feb 12, 2020
• Publication Date: Feb 21, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 16, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 13, 2021
• Journal: Organic Process Research and Development
• Print ISSN: 1083-6160
• Electronic ISSN: 1520-586X
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 201-206
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.oprd.9b00475
• Keywords: Physical and Theoretical Chemistry; Organic Chemistry
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3965461
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.oprd.9b00475
• Additional Information: This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Organic Process Research & Development, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.oprd.9b00475